I don't think the average person actually sees their "whole self" Trace.

There are things that I experienced in my past that traumatized me, but I managed to regroup and carry on anyway. Now that I have more life experience and am re-examining my own history closer, I can see how these traumas affected me in ways I had not realized at the time.

Human beings prefer a structure that provides them with predictiblity. A person may stay in an abusive situation simply because they at least got to a point where they could predict when they would be challenged or they learned how to manage whatever environment they were in where they could "predict". Often that is prefered rather then getting away from a situation because getting away has a lot of unpredictables to it.

The more a person can predict, the less stress their brain experiences. When the brain experiences a "predictable structure", it adjusts and begins to operate on auto pilot. When it gets unpredictable the individual has to use the frontal lobe more, and the individual experiences more stress in the brain which as you know produces more cortizol that pumps into the body getting ready for fight or flight. That is much more "tiring" on the brain and the body.

A big enough trauma can dramatically change one's personal sense of structure and it can be such an unpredictible event that it dramatically changes a persons personal sense of predictable structure. The conscious mind is completely caught off guard and knowing where to "fit" whatever took place that was so traumatic can really be very challenging.